Ned Stark:mayIFark: Therion: If there really was Justice in the world, Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney would be locked in a small cage in The Hague and forced to fight each other with rusty spoons for their food.

I hate it that Bush gets an easy pass as if it was all Cheney forcing a little kid to do all those bad things. Make it a 3-way between Bush, Cheney and Kissinger and you are up to something.

We've gotta limit theses sorts of things to the topical and our own personal villains. If we're attempting a complete list we'll be here all day chanting the names of the damned. And that's a little creepy.

Lol wut?

Just complete the list of top 10 worst human beings to ever walk on the face of the earth, and we'll be done (and those 3 will be there).

For as liberal as I am sometimes, I actually like Kissinger. Unlike Cheney, who is a sack of shiat, Kissinger saw the world through the eyes of a learned PhD policy maker, somebody who applied his research to policy. Everything he did was realism in practice.

Karma Curmudgeon:Testiclaw: Wasn't it Hitchens who said about Kissinger: "If we gave him an enema he could be buried in a matchbox"?

I miss Hitch.

Kissinger was a disgusting, vile cockroach.

That was the old Hitchens. He died an unrepentant cheerleader for war criminals.

I agreed with him on his religious critiques, he was fun to watch in debates, but could never agree to his position on Iraq, especially since he still maintained his unwavering support after we knew there were no WMD's.

trotsky:For as liberal as I am sometimes, I actually like Kissinger. Unlike Cheney, who is a sack of shiat, Kissinger saw the world through the eyes of a learned PhD policy maker, somebody who applied his research to policy. Everything he did was realism in practice.

I'm not sure how I feel about a user named "trotsky" advocating a realpolitik approach to things.

trotsky:For as liberal as I am sometimes, I actually like Kissinger. Unlike Cheney, who is a sack of shiat, Kissinger saw the world through the eyes of a learned PhD policy maker, somebody who applied his research to policy. Everything he did was realism in practice.

trotsky:For as liberal as I am sometimes, I actually like Kissinger. Unlike Cheney, who is a sack of shiat, Kissinger saw the world through the eyes of a learned PhD policy maker, somebody who applied his research to policy. Everything he did was realism in practice.

mayIFark:Ned Stark: mayIFark: Therion: If there really was Justice in the world, Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney would be locked in a small cage in The Hague and forced to fight each other with rusty spoons for their food.

I hate it that Bush gets an easy pass as if it was all Cheney forcing a little kid to do all those bad things. Make it a 3-way between Bush, Cheney and Kissinger and you are up to something.

We've gotta limit theses sorts of things to the topical and our own personal villains. If we're attempting a complete list we'll be here all day chanting the names of the damned. And that's a little creepy.

Lol wut?

Just complete the list of top 10 worst human beings to ever walk on the face of the earth, and we'll be done (and those 3 will be there).

Nearly 1/3rd of the top ten evil people of all time are Americans alive at the same time as you?

Henry Kissinger is such a selfish bastid. I mean, Augusto Pinochet is right now in the Seventh Circle of Hell standing in a pool of boiling blood that is up to his chin, being shot by centaurs with arrows everytime he tries to go to the shallow end of the blood pool.

Kissinger needs to go and join Augusto and help him block some of those arrows.

trotsky:For as liberal as I am sometimes, I actually like Kissinger. Unlike Cheney, who is a sack of shiat, Kissinger saw the world through the eyes of a learned PhD policy maker, somebody who applied his research to policy. Everything he did was realism in practice.

It was Kissinger who famously pronounced that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. I will not sit here quietly while you farkers slander a great American just because he tried to help his buddies in Argentina get laid.

whidbey:trotsky: For as liberal as I am sometimes, I actually like Kissinger. Unlike Cheney, who is a sack of shiat, Kissinger saw the world through the eyes of a learned PhD policy maker, somebody who applied his research to policy. Everything he did was realism in practice.

Bullshiat.

Remember, "realism" in this context just means "perpetuating the current highly artificial state of affairs because it benefits certain western powers and, more importantly, their pocketbooks".

whidbey:trotsky: For as liberal as I am sometimes, I actually like Kissinger. Unlike Cheney, who is a sack of shiat, Kissinger saw the world through the eyes of a learned PhD policy maker, somebody who applied his research to policy. Everything he did was realism in practice.

Bullshiat.

Realism sometimes meaning recognizing that your side is the one with a death star, and a guy who wears all black named "darth vader". Acting like an evil empire when you're an evil empire is practical.

ikanreed:whidbey: trotsky: For as liberal as I am sometimes, I actually like Kissinger. Unlike Cheney, who is a sack of shiat, Kissinger saw the world through the eyes of a learned PhD policy maker, somebody who applied his research to policy. Everything he did was realism in practice.

Bullshiat.

Realism sometimes meaning recognizing that your side is the one with a death star, and a guy who wears all black named "darth vader". Acting like an evil empire when you're an evil empire is practical.

Yeah I suppose "realism in practice"="might makes right."

A forced reality, perhaps. Seems to me "realism in practice" would be making a better world through more altruistic means, but hey.

Ned Stark:mayIFark: Ned Stark: mayIFark: Therion: If there really was Justice in the world, Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney would be locked in a small cage in The Hague and forced to fight each other with rusty spoons for their food.

I hate it that Bush gets an easy pass as if it was all Cheney forcing a little kid to do all those bad things. Make it a 3-way between Bush, Cheney and Kissinger and you are up to something.

We've gotta limit theses sorts of things to the topical and our own personal villains. If we're attempting a complete list we'll be here all day chanting the names of the damned. And that's a little creepy.

Lol wut?

Just complete the list of top 10 worst human beings to ever walk on the face of the earth, and we'll be done (and those 3 will be there).

Nearly 1/3rd of the top ten evil people of all time are Americans alive at the same time as you?

This was pretty well known in most political science spaces. This was taught as a known fact when I was in school in the '90s. Placing it in context with all of the other things we did in Central and South America in the 20th century, this was seen by many as a way to place a limited timeline boundary on what was already believed to be taking place. We find amazing ways to justify messing in other countries politics.

Gosling:How much money would I have to pay to get to see Kissinger and St. Peter having it out at the Pearly Gates?

Give all your money to the poor on your deathbed 50 years from now. That'll probably excuse you for cutting in line and wading through the enormous backlog to where Peter will still be reading out the list of Kissinger's transgressions.

FTA: "...the Carter administration reversed policy and made human rights a priority in its relations with Argentina and other nations."

If that's what the Carter administration did--I for one recall no such reversal of policy regarding Argentina--it didn't help the Argentinian leftists who were being rounded up and murdered by the Videla government. Most of the deaths in the Dirty War happened during 1977-81.

Kissinger is pretty damned reprehensible, no doubt in my mind about that. But I was alive during 1977-81, and my recollection is that Carter and his foreign policy people were content to sit on their hands while Videla and his muchachos did their dirty work. It is ironic indeed that the Dirty War ended because Margaret Thatcher, a friend an ally of Ronald Reagan's, challenged and defeated Argentina's military government over its invasion of the Falklands, and this with the support not only of Reagan but of Augusto Pinochet.

tirob:FTA: "...the Carter administration reversed policy and made human rights a priority in its relations with Argentina and other nations."

If that's what the Carter administration did--I for one recall no such reversal of policy regarding Argentina--it didn't help the Argentinian leftists who were being rounded up and murdered by the Videla government. Most of the deaths in the Dirty War happened during 1977-81.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War

Kissinger is pretty damned reprehensible, no doubt in my mind about that. But I was alive during 1977-81, and my recollection is that Carter and his foreign policy people were content to sit on their hands while Videla and his muchachos did their dirty work. It is ironic indeed that the Dirty War ended because Margaret Thatcher, a friend an ally of Ronald Reagan's, challenged and defeated Argentina's military government over its invasion of the Falklands, and this with the support not only of Reagan but of Augusto Pinochet.

Carter's efforts to reshape American foreign policy to emphasize the primacy of human rights were announced with great fanfare and just as great derision. He made a genuine effort to change this nation's approach to foreign policy but was hamstrung at every turn by political opponents, foreign allies, even members of his own administration and foreign service corps, all of whom considered his approach naive and, frankly, unprofitable.

I just ran into a blurb by a book from Cornell University Press that sounds like something you may be interested in - it's called The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere: Human Rights and U.S. Cold War Policy toward Argentina. From the blurb: "Entering the Oval Office at the height of the kidnapping, torture, and murder of tens of thousands of Argentines by the military government, Carter set out to dramatically shift U.S. policy from subtle support to public condemnation of human rights violation. But could the administration elicit human rights improvements in the face of a zealous military dictatorship, rising Cold War tension, and domestic political opposition? By grappling with the disparate actors engaged in the struggle over human rights, including civil rights activists, second-wave feminists, chicano/a activists, religious progressives, members of the New Right, conservative cold warriors, and business leaders, [author William M.] Schmidli utilizes unique interviews with U.S. and Argentine actors as well as newly declassified archives to offer a telling analysis of the rise, efficacy, and limits of human rights in shaping U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War."

ikanreed:Can we just accept that republican foreign policy is "People who aren't Americans deserve to die, and a few American soldier deaths are worth it to cause those deaths"?And can we accept that democratic foreign policy is "We don't care, let's keep doing whatever we're doing"

trotsky:For as liberal as I am sometimes, I actually like Kissinger. Unlike Cheney, who is a sack of shiat, Kissinger saw the world through the eyes of a learned PhD policy maker, somebody who applied his research to policy. Everything he did was realism in practice.

tirob:FTA: "...the Carter administration reversed policy and made human rights a priority in its relations with Argentina and other nations."

If that's what the Carter administration did--I for one recall no such reversal of policy regarding Argentina--it didn't help the Argentinian leftists who were being rounded up and murdered by the Videla government. Most of the deaths in the Dirty War happened during 1977-81.

Even though he disclaims it in that interview, I personally heard him say this very thing in an interview on NPR, and friends have confirmed that they heard the same interview. (If I recall correctly, the interview was in follow-up to NPR getting complaints after playing Lehrer's Vatican Rag as a humorous outro to some story.)

BMulligan:Entering the Oval Office at the height of the kidnapping, torture, and murder of tens of thousands of Argentines by the military government, Carter set out to dramatically shift U.S. policy from subtle support to public condemnation of human rights violation. But could the administration elicit human rights improvements in the face of a zealous military dictatorship, rising Cold War tension, and domestic political opposition? By grappling with the disparate actors engaged in the struggle over human rights, including civil rights activists, second-wave feminists, chicano/a activists, religious progressives, members of the New Right, conservative cold warriors, and business leaders, [author William M.] Schmidli utilizes unique interviews with U.S. and Argentine actors as well as newly declassified archives to offer a telling analysis of the rise, efficacy, and limits of human rights in shaping U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War."

Carter became President while the Dirty War was just getting started; the worst of the repression and murders happened in 1977 and 1978. I don't know whether the drop after 1978 in number of people who were "disappeared" was a result of outside pressure on the Videla government or whether it was because that government had already eliminated the toughest of its leftist opponents. I suspect that the latter is more the case than the former.

The book sounds interesting. Thanks for the heads up. I still consider Argentina to be Mr. Carter's most serious foreign policy failure. If it be true that Kissinger and Gerald Ford gave a "green light" to the junta, then Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski never tried to turn it back to red or even yellow.

For you Spanish readers out there, a link to a list with some stories about some of the people who were kidnapped and murdered by the Argentinian governments of the late '70s and early '80s:

DrPainMD:tirob: FTA: "...the Carter administration reversed policy and made human rights a priority in its relations with Argentina and other nations."

If that's what the Carter administration did--I for one recall no such reversal of policy regarding Argentina--it didn't help the Argentinian leftists who were being rounded up and murdered by the Videla government. Most of the deaths in the Dirty War happened during 1977-81.

DrPainMD:ikanreed: Can we just accept that republican foreign policy is "People who aren't Americans deserve to die, and a few American soldier deaths are worth it to cause those deaths"?And can we accept that democratic foreign policy is "We don't care, let's keep doing whatever we're doing" the exact same as the Republican?

FTFY

/google Zbigniew Brzezinski

Yeah, BSABSVR, I know I know. It's not like both recent republican presidential candidates were like "let's pointlessly invade another middle eastern country for the same dumb reasons as the last one(under a republican candidate)" and the democratic president was just like "Let's keep this one war we have, that's unnecessary, going"